Conversations about Health and Wellbeing

Tag: healthcare

Last week, I had the privilege of being at Morecambe Bay Community Primary School. The school is a beacon of hope in this area. I found it extremely moving to walk round, with Siobhan Collingwood, the visionary and big-hearted headteacher and see the incredible love displayed by all staff towards the amazing children there. It made me realise again how centrally driven targets often make no sense for so many of our children and communities, especially when the base from which they start is so very different. Siobhan and her team are doing the most incredible job at caring holistically for the children here, dealing with complex behavioural issues with such kindness and brilliance that it brings tears to my eyes, even writing about it. Not only so, but the standard of teaching to then try and help these kids come up to the ‘required standards’, being creative with the resources available, is nothing short of miraculous. I would defy any school inspector to rate this school as anything else than ‘outstanding’.

Siobhan and I had a great discussion about the need for health, social care, the voluntary and faith sector, the police and education to work more closely together for the wellbeing of children and young people in our communities. This is already happening in part, through our health and wellbeing partnership and ‘better care together’, but there is far more we can do. We thought about what it might be like if we parachuted fresh into the community now and had to start from scratch, what we might do together…….

We would start with stories – we already have many, from the conversations we’ve had in the community, but we want to really listen and be changed by the responses that we hear. We’re so grateful for the work of the ‘poverty truth commission’, helping us to do just that. We would also definitely pool our resources and prioritise key services that would not be taken away once the community begins to thrive, such as parenting classes, cooking lessons, early support services, a radically caring housing sector, preventative policing strategies (now emerging powerfully in partnership with our town and city councils), social care, mental health champions (something Siobhan has already been part of recruiting 150 locally!), children’s centres and adult education centres as a starter for 10. We would overlay this with the things that are working now – there is so much goodness happening and we don’t negate this. We want to ensure that we could see the health inequality gaps close.

In order to build on this idea of ‘healthy schools’, we would see kids being active every day – despite, limited grounds space, this school, like many others locally are running a mile a day. There is a great scheme here in which all the kids are learning to cook healthy, nutritious food, building vital life skills needed now and in the future. The breakfast and after school clubs are providing many healthy meals each day for the kids and throughout the summer holidays the schools cook – another woman with an incredibly big heart, opens the hall to feed families, who cannot afford to eat during the long breaks. A huge amount of work is being done around gender equality (have you seen the amazing documentary series “No more boys and girls: can our kids go gender free?” On BBCiplayer?). Kids are also given a huge dose of self esteem and know that they are loved and belong. If only the same level of caring support could be afforded through the transition to high school…..

Over the coming months, we hope to co-host some conversations with the community, not on our terms but shaped together with them. Siobhan spent years trying to think of great ideas to get the parents to come into school and interact with her. It wasn’t until the parents set up their own coffee morning in the old garage of the school playground, that she went to meet with them on their terms and started to build some staggeringly life-changing relationships. We know we are changed every time these kind of conversations happen and it blows our world view up so that we can collaborate effectively and co-design services with them. We want to share data with them about health and educational outcomes in order to create a passion for change and do some appreciative enquiry about all the great stuff already embedded in the community. Through these conversations, we want to connect people together and see a social movement for positive change.

The future of Morecambe is bright and full of hope. The communities are strong, the place is beautiful and the people are amazing. Siobhan is just one of many incredible headteachers in this area, committed to one another and this geography through bonds of friendship. If a genuine partnership between health and education can develop here (and it’s part of my vision and ambition to see this done) then who knows what might be possible over the coming months and years?

It is time for Morecambe to find its joy again. It has been the joke for too long, but soon it will become the place where the joke is found and everyone will want to know what we’re laughing about.

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of sitting in some conversations at ‘Imagination’, Lancaster University as part of a conference, hosted by Prof Paul Rogers, entitled ‘Does Design Care?’ It has left me with much to think about in terms of how the health and social care system is currently being redesigned here in the UK.

In Morecambe Bay, we have been set a target to save £85 million over the next 3 years, learning to live within a smaller budget than we have had previously. In order to help us consider our options, we were encouraged to have the consultancy firm, PwC, come and work with us for a number of weeks. They met with many of us from across our system and worked with us to subsequently bring some recommendations to us as a leadership team about how they perceive we can tackle the problems facing us. When I met with them, I asked them to consider coming with me to walk through some of our most “deprived” communities, to talk with the people here, so that their proposals did not become detached from those who need our services the most. Unfortunately, they were unable to make the time to do so. I wonder how often consultancy is done and recommendations are made without the involvement of local communities. I wonder if the concept of co-design is anywhere near being at the core of our values. I wonder if design really cares very much at all. I know it does but maybe it has lost its way a bit.

A wonderful challenge was brought to ‘Imagination’ by Saurabh Tewari from India, to embrace the Gandhian principle of ‘Sarvodaya’ as a framework for design. Sarvodaya means ‘the upliftment of all’. The idea flows from Ruskin, of Cumbria in his work ‘Unto This Last’ and from Christ and his teaching from the Parable of the Vineyard. Our design or re-design of systems could easily forget that part of its call is to ensure that this is outworked. Many of the interventions tried through the redesign of services often does nothing at all to tackle health inequalities and in fact can often widen the gaps we see. This idea of ‘Sarvodaya’ has so much synergy with the concept of a ‘redistributive’ and ‘regenerative’ economy. There is little point designing something that does not carry the blatant goal of trying to improve the life of everyone, but especially those who find themselves at the bottom of the pile, or suffering, the most.

The priorities of Sarvodaya are: care for the environment and care for the weakest… so similar to the politics of Jesus – care for the poor, the sick, children, women, prisoners, refugees and the environment. These seem like really good foundational things to be careful about when we think about design of any sort.

Dr James Fathers, Director of Syracuse University School of Design, delivered a powerful paper about this whole area of co-design. He ended with a beautiful quote from Lila Watson an Aboriginal Elder, activist and educator from Queensland, Australia:

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Design at it’s best, if it is to work for the health and wellbeing of all, means that all are redesigned, re-configured and changed for the better within the process, because all are included in the design process i.e. Co-design. Together we find we need each other and so are all transformed independently and corporately into something more beautiful and whole.

At the heart of ‘Sarvodaya’ is the idea of ‘Khadi’. Khadi is a hand-spun and handwoven cotton cloth, representing both a non-violent protest against the British products, but also a sign of a community learning to be self-reliant, self-sufficient and to use village articles only when and where available. I wonder if we’ve thought about the redesign of our health and social care systems based on the values of caring for those who need it most, uplifting the whole of society (but in so doing, ensuring the closing of the inequality gap), using our resources thoughtfully not wastefully and doing so together, with a spirit of non-violence. What might our systems be like if we held true to these values?

Tweet The ethics of Healthcare is about 2000 years ahead of the ethics of Health Economics! All doctors in the UK take an amended Hippocratic oath when we qualify, in which we promise to: Do no harm Prioritise the patient Treat the whole person, not just the symptom Obtain prior informed consent Call on the [Continue Reading …]

Tweet The commonwealth fund (an influential US think tank) recently declared the NHS to be the best healthcare system in the world, for the second year running! https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/14/nhs-holds-on-to-top-spot-in-healthcare-survey Many think of the NHS as the Jewel in the UK Crown, more popular, as it is, then our own Royal Family. Andrew Street (professor of [Continue Reading …]

Tweet As the crisis in the Western World deepens, and the growing reality sets in that business as usual simply can no longer continue nor solve our problems, our systems must change the way they view, deal with and hold onto power. The NHS is no exception. If we want a health and social care [Continue Reading …]

Tweet A Culture of Joy is the biggest determinant of safe and high quality healthcare! That is such a phenomenal statement that it is worth reading over and over again, making it into a poster, sticking it on your wall and meditating on it morning and night. It feels to be simultaneously absolutely true and [Continue Reading …]

Tweet I went to London a couple of weeks ago for the IHI (Institute for Health Innovation) conference in London – Quality Forum 2017. The focus was on Quality and Safety in Healthcare, with some hugely surprising and refreshing perspectives from around the world. It was absolutely great and I learnt loads. I’ve tried to [Continue Reading …]

Tweet My morning surgery began today with a patient of mine, who works as Health Care Assistant (or Band 3) in our local acute hospital trust. As we find across the board in the NHS right now, there are pressures in her department with under-staffing and a very high and demanding work load. She started [Continue Reading …]

Tweet On Friday night, watching comic relief, I got quite excited as the total neared £50 million – I turned to my lovely wife and said – ha – there now, we can plug the gap in our local health economy for next year! (Obviously the money is desperately needed in many situations across the [Continue Reading …]

Tweet *Warning – this blog contains swear words (not that I’m usually a potty mouth!) This last week we had a gathering of clinical leaders around Morecambe Bay – Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Health Visitors, Midwives, Doctors, Surgeons, Physiotherapists, Pharmacists etc. We were gathered from across primary and secondary care to look together at the financial [Continue Reading …]